


Mitra

by avani



Category: Baahubali (Movies)
Genre: Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 20:13:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13038570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avani/pseuds/avani
Summary: There are not many blessings in Sivagami's destiny. This is one of them.





	Mitra

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spiffycups](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiffycups/gifts).



On her seventh birthday, Sivagami has her fortune told, quite against her father’s wishes. “Enough men lie to me in a day,” he grumbles, “without my having to pay for the privilege.” But her mother is adamant, and Sivagami herself all agog at the thought of discovering her future, and so, at last, he assents.

Sivagami spends the hours preceding imagining in glorious detail what she may hear: of long-awaited destinies as yet unfulfilled, of being the savior of the city, or having her name remembered always.

The results, however, are less than satisfactory. It seems Sivagami must be in possession of a particularly difficult palm to read: what other explanation can be there be for being told she will be a _sumangali_ and spouseless both, mother of two sons and none, betrayer and betrayed all at once?

Her father grunts. “I’ve seen enough.” He rises to go, and Sivagami follows, but the fortune-teller catches at her hand.

“Wait!” He says, only a little desperately. “What’s this I see?” He points at a line, firm and deep, that merged into the line signifying her life that he identified earlier. His eyes widen dramatically. “A gift granted to few,” he intones.

“A true love?” Sivagami ventures, young and fanciful enough to still hope for such a thing.

“Rarer than that, and far more precious: a true friend.”

Sivagami is a well-liked child, and has as many friends already as she has fingers: the thought of one more is not much to excite her. Her face falls as she lets her father lead her away.

“It just goes to show,” he says sagely as they pick their way back home through the crowded streets of Mahishmati, “cheats and charlatans, all of them.”

Perhaps, Sivagami decides glumly. It had been a mistake to look forward to the fortune-teller so, after all, and as she does all her mistakes, she puts all memory of it from her mind.

*  
By her wedding day, Sivagami has four times as many friends as she does fingers. Marrying into royalty is beneficial for one’s popularity, after all; and everyone wants to claim having once been companions with the Crown Prince’s sister-in-law. Sivagami’s ears ache from their chatter; her cheeks are sore from smiling. It is rather a relief to retreat into the palace, where perhaps she might be left alone long enough to gather her thoughts.

But even there, the servants join her, shyly conveying their congratulations. She cannot have her hair dressed, her bedsheets replaced, her chambers so much as swept without benedictions and predictions as to her unquestionable happiness. So when a straight-backed soldier comes to escort her to the Shiva temple for a new bride’s prayers and gives her only the silence, her only response is:

“Do you not intend to wish me joy?” If she were another woman, her tone might be teasing; in her, it is only skeptical of such a stroke of sudden fortune.

The soldier studies his feet with as much apparent interest as she takes in the elaborate _mardaani_ scrawled across her palms. “I may not do so, Princess,” he says at last.

She looks up at that, and almost laughs. “I appreciate your honesty,” she says--and notices, all too late, the the metal bands around his wrists and neck that mark him as a slave. No joke, then, or shared acknowledgement of her husband’s inadequacy, but only that he lacks even the power to wish her well. She feels a fool for not having noticed earlier.

A mistake, not to have been more observant: here in the palace, a similar one could cost her dearly in the days to come. Her stomach twists with shame.

Like all her mistakes, Sivagami puts all memory of him from her mind.

*  
Sivagami is never so impolite as to ignore him, precisely—not that Karikala Kattappa Nadar is an easy man to ignore, even in his youth—but it is simple enough to let her eyes slide past him, as though he were no more than a seat or a stool set aside for the comfort of the royal family. Certainly it is no worse than the treatment he receives from the rest. Her husband dislikes him; her father-in-law patronizes him; and the Crown Prince stammers awkwardly in his presence.

The surprise is not that he chooses to stand by her when he must approach the royal family. The surprise is that her silence apparently gives him as much comfort as his once did her.

It makes her think better of him. Sivagami is a woman who likes to give, and nothing causes her greater sorrow than to find her hands empty in her new home. Charity she dispenses, gold she offers to the gods ritually, but she never can forget that none of it is hers to grant. But a heartbeat or two of peace she can provide to the slave of the royal house, and she feels all the richer by it.

Paying attention to the effects of her largesse means, by necessity, that she is the first one--perhaps the only one--to realize those rare reactions Kattappa allows himself to show.

“Dog,” sneers her husband, and Kattappa bows his head.

“Your faithful service is a credit to your ancestors,” booms her father-in-law, and Kattappa nods.

“It must be terrible being a slave,” says the Crown Prince, innocent and all too earnest, and Kattappa lets only the slightest muscle in his jaw work.

She could make worse mistakes, she thinks, than to cloak herself in his calmness.

That, she remembers.

*  
When her father-in-law dies, Sivagami is still unaccustomed to attending sickbeds; the vigil of waiting for a loved one to breathe their last is not the bitter routine it becomes later in her life. This first time, therefore, when she faces the unknown, Kattappa waits with her.

Death is an ugly thing, hardly ever glorious: that is the first thing she learns. Her father-in-law, so feared and famed, is reduced to coughing up phlegm that he is too weak to wipe away himself, and Sivagami thinks, not for the first time: I could leave.

But his sons have both left him long before her, the elder out of disgust, the younger out of heartbreak, and if she goes now, he will be alone. She bears the man before her no great love, but no great hatred, either: he deserves better than a final desertion.

So she stays, and it is with Sivagami that the dying King of Mahishmati shares, not only the mysteries of the secret tunnels of the palace, but also the wisdom he has won from years of administration. She stays, and learns of sacrifice and duty and honor: things he should have told his sons, but cannot, now that it is too late.

(“I won’t do so,” she will promise Kattappa desperately, once it is over, and she is standing in sunlight instead of the stagnant stench of the sickroom. “I will teach my children what they must know when it will still do them some good.”)

But now: “A ruler cannot afford the luxury of friendship,” her father-in-law croaks, and Sivagami bends over him worriedly.

“Please rest, Your Majesty” she warns. “You should save your strength.”

“No--” he says, trying to sit up and failing. Sivagami catches him barely in time. “No. This is--more important.” He musters up all his strength and meets her gaze squarely. “A ruler cannot afford friendship. Her wisdom cannot be so impaired; her judgment must be utterly impartial. Tell me--promise me--you will not be so foolish.”

Her, he said; her. A compliment beyond all treasures; an act of unquestionable treason to think of taking the Crown Prince’s place.

“I--” Sivagami stammers, and reminds herself: the ravings of a dying man. Worthless in every sense. Nothing that deserves her denying him the comfort he seeks. “I shall not,” she says. “I swear it to you.”

He closes his eyes, satisfied, and when the physician pronounces him dead hours later, a smile rests on his face.

Sivagami lets out a shaky sigh, of mingled grief and relief; and only then does she remember Kattappa’s presence, still there, a witness to every word that had been spoken.

In an instant, he could destroy her. Her husband will not defend her, she knows; her brother-in-law might dither and fret but ultimately allow himself to be convinced by his councillors that treason cannot be tolerated.

She wonders, a little unhappily, what the punishment for treasonous words by a member of the royal family is. At the moment, Sivagami can’t quite remember.

Kattappa studies her, grave and guarded as always. At last his face relaxes into the closest thing to a smile she has ever seen him produce. “I salute your kindness, Lady,” he tells her gently, and inclines his head into a true bow, his right hand coming up to cross his chest--not the rigid gestures he bestowed upon the rest of the royal family as a matter of rote, but an action born of true respect.

Sivagami is too taken aback to smile back; but she need not, she knows, disgrace him or herself by asking if he means to repeat any of what he’s heard to unfriendly ears. Or to any; this secret will die between the two of them. That she trusts in absolutely.

“Thank you,” she says faintly.

A mistake, perhaps, her father-in-law would say; a betrayal of the promise made only hours ago. Instead Sivagami puts his warning from her mind instead.

*

Vikramadeva proves a surprisingly effective leader. To be sure, he is still too soft-hearted; more than once, Sivagami listens to one of his pronouncements and finds herself meeting Kattappa’s gaze in shared amusement of their King’s naivete. But his heart is true and good, and he makes no errors that they cannot correct between the two of them.

And then he dies.

The shock of his passing is nothing compared to the chaos that follows. Sivagami does what she can to ease the transition between Vikramadeva and his unborn heir (a son, she tries to convince herself, it must be a son, but if not--

...If not, her son will be King.) but it is a difficult task. The ministers disagree with each other over every triviality they can think of, and every man with the slightest claim to the throne suddenly feels the need to parade himself about the capital, as though the Queen’s womb did not hold Mahishmati’s rightful next ruler (a son; surely it will be a son; there is no reason to think it might not be).

Then the healers admit to her that they do not believe that the Queen will survive childbirth.

She tries her best to suppress the whispers, but the healers have their price, as does everyone else. Before she knows it, all of Mahishmati knows that the Queen is not expected to live through the year, and that she will most likely take her child with her. The unoccupied throne becomes an all too alluring prize, and even the wild promises of the fortune tellers that Sivagami consults -- that the unborn babe will live to be the greatest soul Mahishmati has ever seen and its one true savior, that destiny has written its mark on him, that he will never be forgotten --

(Cheats and charlatans, grumbles the memory of her father’s voice, and Sivagami stifles a laugh.)

Even those predictions are not enough to dissuade the wicked plans brewing about her. But she is one woman, not royal, against hundreds of men: what, if anything can she do? Her hands are bound against their might, and all she can do is wait for the end to come--

“Your hands are not bound, Lady,” Kattappa corrects gently. “You are free.”

She looks at him, and marvels at the confidence he has in her, in her judgment, in her deeds. She had not been surprised that she trusted him; but she is surprised to find that he trusts her.  
Very likely this will be Sivagami’s greatest mistake, not to mention her last, but be that as it may, Kattappa will be there beside her.

“So I am,” she says, and puts her doubts from her mind.

*  
She brings the baby to him in the courtyard, before they must parade into the throne room for the confrontation with Martand and his men. Presentation is half a battle, Sivagami knows, and to take Martand by surprise will do more for her chances of success than anything else. At best, today will end in the blood of others; and worst, in their own; and so before the reckoning comes, she allows Kattappa one last minute of peace and wonder.

“He will be called Amarendra Baahubali,” Sivagami says. Kattappa stares at the child, enchanted; surely he has never come across many babies in his line of work. He raises the child up to study him more closely in the sunlight, and Baahubali gurgles. At once Kattappa lowers him, looking vaguely guilty.

“It’s all right,” says Sivagami reassuringly. “That means he likes it.”

Kattappa looks suspicious, but he takes the boy up in his hands once more. The baby chuckles, and Kattappa laughs along with him. Sivagami watches him, amused; years it had taken Baahubali’s ancestors to bend Kattappa’s people to their will, and it takes this infant only a few minutes to enthrall him.

“He a gift from the gods.” Kattappa laughs. “A gem among men!”

“Rarer than that,” Sivagami murmurs, “and far more precious.”

A faint memory stirs at those words, a promise made years ago and now fulfilled. The details are imprecise and muddled, but she recalls…disappointment, joined now by a sudden awareness of danger.

Unaware of her preoccupation Kattappa relinquishes the boy reluctantly to his nurse once more before climbing the stairs to the balcony above the throne, where he will wait for her signal. Sivagami watches him go, praying his faith in her does not prove to be a mistake.

It does not matter. Her wisdom will be unimpaired, her judgment impartial. She will not fail; she cannot afford to. So she has said, and so it must be.

Sivagami takes a deep breath, and pushes her doubts from her mind. 

**Author's Note:**

> * _Mitra_ \- Sanskrit; friend.  
>  * _sumangali_ a woman who is outlived by her husband; in Hindu culture, considered the most fortunate of women.  
>  * One of the hardest things to balance in this fic was the genuine friendship between Sivagami and Kattappa, with the fact that she is nonetheless complicit in allowing his servitude. I can only hope it is I do the inherent uneasiness of their relationship justice here.  
> * Special thanks to Maya/parlegee/weaslayyy for betaing/brainstorming/general handholding as always!


End file.
